The Senate has introduced a bill intended to include harsher penalties for …

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The government will soon be able to sue parties involved in "hoaxes" that are mistaken for terrorism if a new bill is passed by Congress. The bill, entitled "The Terrorist Hoax Improvements Act of 2007," was introduced by the Senate and will amend the federal criminal code to include a number of new clauses meant to up the ante on wasting government resources. The amendments include extensions to the prohibitions on the spread of false information and mailing threats, increases to maximum prison terms, and allowances for civil suits so that local and federal governments can attempt to recoup expenses related to an incident.

The bill's introduction comes several months after the city of Boston made headlines over a "bomb scare" that turned out to be something not quite so serious. The Great Mooninite Scare of 2007 was, in fact, a guerrilla marketing campaign carried out by a marketing agency employed by the Cartoon Network for its popular late-night show Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Circuit boards with LED lights in the shape of a Mooninite were placed all over 10 cities in the US: Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.

The signs were in place for several weeks without incident. However, that changed one fateful day in January when a passenger on Boston's mass transit system spotted one and alerted the authorities. The rest, as they say, is history. The police descended upon Boston and shut down large parts of the city over what they thought was an act of terrorism. After realizing that the Mooninites were of no harm, the authorities were quick to call the incident a hoax and arrested two people who were employed to put the signs up. A judge eventually said that the suspects did not appear to have intended to create panic. However, that did not placate city officials who remained outraged at the incident, promising to push for harsher punishments in the future for incidents that waste government resources.

That brings us to where we are today, with the Terrorist Hoax Improvements Act of 2007. Although the Mooninite scare was determined to not be a hoax (but rather an unfortunate series of poor decisions), the provisions in the bill would allow the government to take civil action against parties involved in perceived hoaxes if they fail to "promptly and reasonably inform one or more parties... of the actual nature of the activity" once they learn about investigative action taking place. In the case of Boston, this means that everyone involved could be sued for not immediately informing the police of the campaign upon receiving news of the emergency reaction.

This sounds all well and good—who wouldn't want the government to be reimbursed for resources wasted during a hoax? However, it also assumes that the local governments themselves aren't contributing to the unnecessary waste of resources. The government can sue individuals for contributing to the wasting of resources (even if accidentally), but individuals cannot sue the city in return for the same.

Reimbursement-wise, however, things seem to have worked out in the aftermath of the Boston scare. The companies involved in the Boston scare did in fact end up settling with the city, agreeing to pay $1 million to reimburse the city of Boston and another $1 million to fund Homeland Security. They even issued a statement taking responsibility for the marketing campaigns that caused such disturbance, although the two suspects originally arrested in the event are still being charged for putting up the signs despite the apparent settlement between the companies and the city. Will they get to sue in the end too? It seems unlikely that someone who truly wants to incite terrorist-like panic would be deterred by the possibility of a civil suit. So what is the point of this bill, exactly?

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Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui